Domain Magnate

Jpost, the top israeli newspaper, published an article on the upcoming Israel.com auction at moniker

You would think Israel.com would be an exciting, detailed Web site on the Jewish state, designed to attract tourists from abroad. But when the Web address is punched in to your Internet browser, all you get is a simple page with an Israeli flag smack in the middle.

In contrast, Australia.com has a virtual tour video where a young man from down under guides you through the complex and fun site, and Mexico.com helps Net surfers plan their entire vacation in “just one click.”

But come May 23, Israel.com should be on its way to becoming exciting and informative. The domain name will be auctioned off to the highest bidder on the Moniker.com live auction site. The physical auction will take place at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C East Conference in Orlando, Florida. read more »

New, great story by Ron of dnjournal read more »

DomainMagnate.com presents an interview with Jeff from DomainBits.com

Details about yourself, occupation, age, location.
Hi Michael! Thanks for the interview. I’m in my late 30s, and live in Ottawa, Canada, with my wife and 4-year old son. My wife and I work together from home - on domaining as well as marketing and running our websites. I also write the blog DomainBits and write for DomainNews. I really like domaining as I like to do things my way, and domaining has no paths that you need to follow - you create your own path and your own success. Staying in my pyjamas all day, being around for my son when he’s not in school, and making good money are all good perks too!

What is your primary focus, e.g. generics, country tlds, short domains etc?
I think that for people who are newer to the industry, there are lots of good opportunities in ccTLDs. These domains are much cheaper than .com domains, and there is solid end user money coming into these extensions to ensure that they continue to do well in the long haul and are not simply speculative bubbles.

So, I concentrate on ccTLDs. I particularly concentrate on UK, Canadian and Indian domains. I’ve found .uk is a particularly strong ccTLD, and my .uk domains do well in terms of type-in traffic and end user offers. I’m in Canada, so I understand the local business climate well, and so I invest in .ca for that reason. I like .in and .co.in for the long term, as India is a huge market whose primary language is English and where there is still going to be a large movement to the internet by both consumers and businesses. read more »

DomainMagnate.com presents an interview with Daniel, or tetrapak on NamePros and DNForum. Daniel is 23 and a full time domainer/web developer

- How long have you been into domaining and how did you get into it?
The story how i got into the domain industry is a bit funny, at least i can laugh now.. 4 years ago i’ve been helping a guy developing his Dubai related business website, and he promised a lot of things, like to be partners and such. I already had a website under developement with the first domain registered by myself, since then it is my biggest website with over 100k uniques per month, but that is another story. So this guy obviously haven’t paid for my work, but he introduced me the so called domain parking.. He sent me over an XLS file with his earnings of the last month. I was simply amazed when i saw that such domains as *Company*Properties.com (TM name..) can earn $8,000 / month purely by registering it and changing the nameservers. So with his help i figured i would register similar domains, as his top 10 domains were all earning 1k$+ / month, i thought i have nothing to lose. First i registered Properties*Company*.com/.net/.org.. and quickly parked them. Now i was officially R I C H. Then came the surprise… Day 1, no earnings.. Day 3 no earnings.. Day 6 ONE unique visitor! Now, i contacted the guy about my “problem”, and i told him that i believe he has faked his stats.. He said his brother is the one dealing with the domains, so he has nothing to do with them, but he knows a way to get a 50k offer on a domain. Which was…: Sedo Featured Listing! Yes, you guess it right, i had another 40$ burned. No sale… Of course he was surprised, but he asked me a favor, to bid on his domain (regfee name..) on Tdnam for 8k, he said there would be people to overbid me anyway. Sure. This was the end and luckily i had no contact with him since then. The good thing is, i started to earn with Adsense, and everything i earned i have reinvested in domains that were suggested by the friendly guys at over Namepros. The first serious sale was of a regfee hyphenated name for 8k that i registered in my first year.

- How many domains do you own and what is your primary focus?
Xxx names, it changes every day. No dot mobis and no dot asias I mostly own .com’s, but i prefer any other tlds for developement. I had success with .info’s as well, they are my lovely cheap ones (except the renewals!). read more »

If you, like over 95% of other domainers, want to develop some of your domains with minimal effort and expenses into a site that can bring revenue, here is one of the best and easiest methods: Set up a bidding directory.

What is a bidding directory?

It’s a regular web directory based on the auction system. Webmasters can submit their links and the links with highest bid will appear on the frontpage of the directory. For example here is one of mine: Casino Bidding Directory, as you may see the highest bid is $100, and the lowest bid on the main page is $60. So a bid of at least $61 is required to be listed on the front page. Minimum bid to submit a site to the directory is set to $9, and you can see that most bids listed in categories are about that amount, for example in advertising

The main advantage of a bidding directory is that its completely automated. read more »

This posts discusses the unique potential of the top quality CVCV.com names and provides valuable tips and updates on where to get them at bargain prices.

LLLL.com remains the most frequently traded type of domains between domainers on the forums and it’s thus important to know the prices and be aware of the market trends and potential.

High end 4L.com’s names, mostly cvcv.com had the highest increase as of lately and it’s not surprising. There are only 2500 quad premium (e.g. only containing the premium letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T) CVCV.com domains (consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, e.g. topa.com, dola.com, nama.com etc.). Out of these names containing H and F are lesser quality. Another 2100 cvcv domains consist of the above letters and one of: U, K; which are considered the best of the non premium letters. And add to these another 1500 domains including V, or W and some of the above mentioned letters. In my opinion these 2500+2100+1500 = 6100 names are the top of the creme 4 letter domains. Other letters: Z,X,Y,J,Q are usually harder to make a brand of and are less attractive to a western, English speaking person. read more »

A new interesting cover story on dnjournal

There are certain names that everyone in this industry knows, names that newcomers normally encounter within hours of entering the domain business. Names like Rick Schwartz, Kevin Ham, Frank Schilling, the Castello Brothers and others from a small band of pioneers who have reached the top of a mountain that thousands of others continue to climb. Most in that group became wealthy because they were visionaries who foresaw how valuable domain names would become long before they appeared on anyone else’s radar. read more »

Here is some interesting information about the .in domaining space. .in domains became available for registration only in 2005 (there was .co.in before that, which is less popular now) and all the top names are taken by several individuals/organizations.

There are currently around 400k-500K .in domains registered. For comparison .asia which just started recently has a similar number of registrations and is perceived by many domainers as “quite useless” and .ca domains have just crossed 1 Million registrations.

Indian economy is growing fast and many companies are eager to establish their online presence. Only about 6% of Indian population have internet access and the potential for growth here is enormous. While the prices are still quite low it provides an excellent investment opportunity.

.in domains can be registered by anyone, no Indian presence required (in contrary to for example .ca domains, which are only for Canadian residents).

Cybersquatters beware .in registry imposes very strict rules to protect trademark owners. Offenders may face very high legal charges and fees.

The highest reported sale for .in domain so far was poker.in for $60K (check other high sales here), which to a western person makes perfect sense, but in fact poker is not popular at all in India so the may actually be much harder to monetize than it seems. As usually there are many high value unreported .in sales and the end user interest is quite high in these.

There are no 1-2 character .in domains, but the LLL.in and NNN.in are quite popular and are traded a lot. Premium LLL.in domains reach around $60-100 minimum prices and in my opinion they represent one of the best investment opportunities now. We’ve seen in .com, net, .org and even in .ca domains how 3 letter domains grow in price on the reseller market and have very good end user potential due to many possible acronyms. Indian domaining space is expected to grow significantly over the years and the value of these names should skyrocket!

Some historical registrations figures, available from INregistry

• Feb 17, 2005 - 24,000 domain names registered on first day
• Feb 21, 2005 - 75,000
• April 05, 2005 - 100,000
• Nov 7, 2006 - 200,000

Generic and GEO .in domains are almost impossible to get now as most are owned by several entities below.

• Indiaportals.org own an amazing portfolio, including some of the best generics. The best among these can easily go for 5 and even low 6 figures.
  bakery.in
bank.in
bar.in
beauty.in
books.in
box.in
buy.in
call.in
card.in
care.in
casino.in
casinos.in
cell.in read more »

In this new section I’m planning to post a series of interviews with other domainers.

Unlike other Interviewers I’m not going after the domaining celebrities, but rather much smaller scale domainers and domain professionals like the average readers of my blog in order to give everyone a fair chance to express their opinions and share their views on the industry.

You’ll get to see domaining through the eyes of various people with different domain portfolios and experiences, as well life backgrounds. An unbiased and straight forward approach to domaining by a wide range of domain investors from the newcomers to experienced professionals.

I received several inquires lately from people interested in being interviewed and
some interviews are being prepared now. If you are reading this and you are interested in getting interviewed feel free to contact me by pming on DNforum or Namepros (My username: Michael_Goldman), or by sending an email to ‘contact’ at this domain.

stay tuned for more updates and the interviews

Interesting and informative post by Sahar over at conceptualist.com:

Looking at our top domain names, here are some patterns we may all learn something from:

1. One or two word generic (descriptive) domain names, all .com

Self explanatory.

2. Traffic is usually strong and/or constant.

Massive traffic on some of the single word domains (hundreds or thousands of unique visits per day) isn’t unusual however, the more traffic a domain has the less targeted the likelihood. It is unusual to find domains which have a lot of traffic and are also extremely targeted and commercial. Those domains, if you are lucky to ever find one, can do thousands of dollars per day with a simple PPC page. read more »